Catalyst Group2015-09-19T21:11:37Zhttp://www.catalystnyc.com/feed/atom/WordPressNick Gouldhttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35962015-04-30T20:24:29Z2015-04-30T20:24:29ZIt used to be easy to draw a clear distinction between products and services. Products were physical, manufactured “goods” that were purchased and owned by a customer. The value of a product was derived from its use or consumption over time – which lasted until it was used up or worn out. Services were intangible […]

]]>It used to be easy to draw a clear distinction between products and services. Products were physical, manufactured “goods” that were purchased and owned by a customer. The value of a product was derived from its use or consumption over time – which lasted until it was used up or worn out. Services were intangible – nothing physical passed to the consumer, but they enjoyed a benefit in the form of some kind of convenience or task that the consumer couldn’t (or preferred not to) complete themselves. The distinction is well illustrated by the comparison between buying ingredients (products) at a grocery store to cook for yourself vs. eating at a restaurant where the meal is cooked and served to you (a service).

These days, the traditional line between products and services is blurring as relationship building and real-time personalization are being embedded into products. Product companies are expanding their understanding of what they provide to customers to include every step of the journey – from becoming aware of the product to being a loyal advocate of it. Activities like “unboxing” are seen as a key point in the product lifecycle when companies expand their view in this way. Existing product companies are adding services to their customer offerings and new companies are using a service mindset to deliver products and simultaneously develop customer connections. Of course, technology has played a big role in merging the concepts of products and services. As physical products are getting “smart” and increasingly able to connect with their owners, and with other devices, they can be available and useful to consumers in an entirely new set of ways.

Traditional services companies are also evolving. Successful companies leverage technology (based on keen customer understanding) to initiate and maintain connections with consumers that are so intimate that they are able to offer services on a real-time basis – and in very personal contexts – that would not have been possible in the past.

The “servitisation” trend should be a welcome one for most businesses as services typically offer higher margins than products do. More importantly, as discussed above, services also offer opportunities to engage with customers more deeply – both in the design of the service offering and in the ongoing delivery of it. This engagement, if effectively managed, will build loyalty that leads to more stable revenue streams a longer customer relationships.

What’s especially exciting is the ways that traditional product manufacturers (or, more often, disruptors of traditional product categories) are developing innovative ways to supplement their product revenue streams, or replace them entirely, with related service offerings. Here are a few of the many examples of hybrid product / service offerings:

Trunk Club: Personal stylists select clothing items based on a style profile and ship them to you to try on. Keep and purchase what you like and return the rest.

A New Kind of Customer Understanding

The servitisation trend means that some companies will need to view their offerings and their customers in entirely new ways – and use new tools and techniques to develop this understanding. Effective service delivery requires that you understand your customer in many dimensions – including the dimension of time, over which their understanding and use of your product may evolve. This understanding needs to go beyond features and functions, beyond competitive advantage and towards a nuanced understanding of how your service delivers value, solves problems, and meshes with your customers’ daily lives. Ask ten product leaders to name their most pressing business challenges and customer understanding is likely to be at or near the top of the lists. In fact, just 12% of companies in a recent survey characterized their understanding of their customers’ journey as “advanced.”

Ask the same leaders who they turn to for help learning more about their customers and how to serve their needs and you might get ten different answers. Increasingly, however, businesses are engaging with user experience designers to confront this challenge. The discipline of user experience design is a unique blend of research, strategy, and design activities aimed at identifying and understanding key customer insights and responding to these insights with design solutions. User experience designers deeply engage with stakeholders and end users alike to develop a detailed understanding of customer archetypes and journeys. These customer journeys are especially effective for identifying opportunities to inject new value for customers at strategic points in the conversation. This value sometimes comes in the form of new digital interactions (mobile apps, new features or functions, etc.), but we also often discover opportunities for entirely new services or product extensions that will meet customer needs in new ways.

Journey Maps like the sketch above are a tool that we use to plot the customer experience from awareness of a brand all the way through to loyalty. We use these to identify areas to enhance the experience based on customer needs during a specific point in in their journey.

The insights gained through a user experience design process can provide businesses with value well beyond the design of digital interfaces. This is especially true in the new world of servitisation. Most products and services involve multiple platforms and touchpoints and require a broad understanding of and inquiry into the various dimensions of the customers’ experience. Questions of branding, messaging, design, usability – and many other issues – are crucial to identify and design the elements of a successful service. Because it is an approach that is deeply concerned with the complete context of a customer’s interactions, user experience design is the best tool to derive this understanding and make decisions on the basis of these insights.

In today’s economy, a keen understanding of customers – which is regularly refreshed with new information and insights – is a prerequisite for business success. Technology has added a proliferation of digital touchpoints and new dimension to this problem. Since customer understanding is the principal objective of user experience design, and since the discipline grew out of the domain of digital interactions, the practice of UX design can help product and service companies innovate their existing offerings, and discover new points of value for their customers.

]]>0Catalyst Grouphttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35902015-04-30T19:27:55Z2015-04-28T20:05:20ZThe process of conducting ongoing research is immensely important to developing and executing successful digital strategies. In order to understand what direction a product or service should take, we always make sure to understand the business objectives, user needs, and product or service goals. All of this information is uncovered through a variety of research […]

]]>The process of conducting ongoing research is immensely important to developing and executing successful digital strategies. In order to understand what direction a product or service should take, we always make sure to understand the business objectives, user needs, and product or service goals.

All of this information is uncovered through a variety of research techniques. This can be as simple as reviewing existing client research and noting what competitors are doing in the space or as in-depth as long-term ethnographic studies, like shadowing people as they interact with a product or service in their normal lives.

As we gather this information we continue to synthesize the results to update and refine our understanding of who these people are and what they need.

This June our Director of Strategy, Ray DeLaPena, will be speaking about how we use multiple research methods to uncover insights and then synthesize that understanding in the form of personas which help to generate product strategies and concepts. Ray will be speaking at the Balanced Teams Summit (more info below):

]]>0Lauren Fousthttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35802015-04-03T16:06:22Z2015-04-03T16:06:22ZThe science of classifying and labeling content is essential to creating a delightful digital experience. It’s the intuitive organization of information that allows users to seamlessly navigate through a site without ever feeling uncertain about where to go next or trying to shake a nagging feeling that they’re missing something relevant that’s been placed in […]

]]>The science of classifying and labeling content is essential to creating a delightful digital experience. It’s the intuitive organization of information that allows users to seamlessly navigate through a site without ever feeling uncertain about where to go next or trying to shake a nagging feeling that they’re missing something relevant that’s been placed in a different section of the site.

The practice of labeling and organizing information, Information Architecture (IA), is certainly a science. However, any time people’s reactions and emotions are brought into the mix there’s always room for error. To mitigate the risk of launching an information architecture that users don’t understand, we use tree testing to measure how users respond to the proposed structure.

What is tree testing? Tree testing is an effective method of evaluating a website’s IA by asking potential users to complete “tasks” using the site’s IA. Tasks should be based on the services or content the site offers its users. For example, a financial services company could have a task asking users to locate information on loan interest rates while a hospital might want to know if users can find the address of their cardiology clinic. Tree testing software allows us to track and analyze what percentage of participants successfully completed each task. It also gives information on task completion times, paths that participants take through the tree, and rates of direct success vs. indirect success.

Top 5 Reasons for Doing a Tree Test

1. Inform future research and design.

One of the best things about tree testing is that it always provides actionable results. Users’ overall ability or failure to complete tasks provides you with useful information about whether the site’s IA makes sense to real users. For example, a low task completion rate tells you that your site may need a complete overhaul of its IA and/or labeling conventions.

On the other hand, even high task completion rates can signal the need for more research and redesign if other metrics confirm that your site isn’t performing well. Verifying that users don’t have trouble navigating your IA means that problems may exist elsewhere. For example, a strong IA on a site with low conversion rates means that there are likely usability issues elsewhere in the flow. Tree testing can help you get to the root of users’ problems and uncover navigation issues that may go unnoticed with other types of research.

2. Get solid research for an affordable price.

Tree testing is very affordable when you have a limited budget. On average, participants spend 10 minutes completing the tree testing tasks, so compensation and recruiting costs are minimal compared to other types of research.

3. Easily compare alternate versions of an IA.

Tree testing allows you to test more than one IA to see which one performs best with users. This is worthwhile to do anytime you have more than one idea about how the IA should work. Whether you want to test several IAs prior to launching a site or you want to compare a new IA to the existing one, it’s a worthwhile investment to prevent user frustrations from happening in the first place.

4. Ask the experts.

Are you a designer or information architect working on a site full of esoteric or complicated topics? No one expects you to fully understand the material, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask the people who do. Put your IA in the hands of those who will actually be using it, whether they be biochemists, stock brokers, or any other group with specialized knowledge. When you’re dealing with a site that is tailored to a specific group of people, you want to make sure they are able to find what they need. Catalyst uses detailed recruiting screeners in tree tests to ensure you are only getting results from people who are representative of your target audience.

5. Get clear results, fast.

Tree tests are great when time is of the essence. Compared to more qualitative research techniques, tree testing requires very little time for recruiting, programming, and execution. Graphical representations of the data let you see what problem areas exist at a glance. This means less time spent on interpreting results and more time implementing changes on your site.

When you partner with Catalyst to conduct a tree test, you get the benefit of having a trained team of professionals who provide expertise in the areas of recruitment, test design, analysis of results, and recommendations. To find out more about tree testing and how it can best serve your needs, send us a message.

]]>0Janine Cooverhttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35652015-02-27T22:41:32Z2015-02-27T22:41:32ZPeople see things differently. We know that everyone experiences reality through the filter of his or her own experiences, culture, environment and biology. We know this intellectually, but we’re also trapped in our own perceptions and preconceptions. We take for granted that what we see or think is the way things actually exist. The current […]

]]>People see things differently. We know that everyone experiences reality through the filter of his or her own experiences, culture, environment and biology. We know this intellectually, but we’re also trapped in our own perceptions and preconceptions. We take for granted that what we see or think is the way things actually exist.

The current foofaraw over the color of a dress demonstrates what happens when we encounter this phenomenon. It’s shocking that someone else can perceive something so differently than we do. Hopefully when this happens it makes you question your assumptions. It makes you stop to reconsider just what is real, rather than jumping to the conclusion that the other person is “wrong”.

The first time I tried a little ad hoc user research I was shocked that an icon that we thought was a natural choice was offensive to a potential website user. It was 1995, and I was working for an ad agency in Los Angeles. We had convinced a client that they needed a website for one of their cat food brands.

The website we designed had six sections; one of which was a Bulletin Board on which cat lovers could share stories and photos of their furry friends. We thought it would bring people to the brand by building an online community long before anyone talked about viral marketing – but I digress.

After attending an interactive design conference in San Francisco, I was inspired to try a little usability test as described by Jakob Nielsen from his work at Sun Microsystems. We had come up with a series of icons for each section of the website, so I decided to try them out on a few potential users. I gleefully roamed the office, seeking colleagues who owned cats to ask their impressions of what each icon might represent. The icon the designers all liked for the Bulletin Board was an illustration of a pushpin stuck into a yellow note.

After talking with five or six people, we seemed to be on the right track. Then I showed the icons to a woman who had a framed picture of two yellow cats on her desk. When she saw the one of the pushpin, she looked horrified and gasped. I couldn’t imagine what she found so upsetting. “You can’t use that one,” she said. “I would never have a pushpin in my house. What if my cats found it on the floor and swallowed it?” Woah! I was instantly hooked on user testing.

In the same way we couldn’t have predicted that the icon might be offensive, I would never have questioned that the dress wasn’t white and gold until someone brought it to my attention. Challenging perceptions and preconceptions is just one of the many reasons we do user research at Catalyst Group. Designers often make assumptions they are not even aware of. This is why they ask us to talk with the people they care about most: the ones who will use their websites or apps, and ultimately determine the success or failure of the design.

]]>0Lauren Foust and Jen Zhaohttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35212015-02-25T23:34:23Z2015-02-25T22:36:00ZMany recent articles and blog posts have addressed the use of the hamburger menu on mobile websites and apps. We here at Catalyst Group have written about it in the past as well (read One Hamburger, Hold the Menu on the use of the hamburger menu on desktop). Although the hamburger menu’s popularity continues to […]

]]>Many recent articles and blog posts have addressed the use of the hamburger menu on mobile websites and apps. We here at Catalyst Group have written about it in the past as well (read One Hamburger, Hold the Menu on the use of the hamburger menu on desktop). Although the hamburger menu’s popularity continues to grow, there is much debate over its usage due to the belief that users don’t understand its functionality.

The Catalyst researchers wanted to explore this belief in greater detail. In the past year, we conducted nearly a hundred individual research sessions in which a mobile website or app’s navigation used a hamburger menu. From this firsthand experience with so many users, we started to notice some trends regarding who typically understands the hamburger menu and who does not.

Some users get it immediately. Some are curious and want to interact with it, even though they have no idea how it might serve them. In the words of one user, “I want to see what that up there does.”

One of the main things we noticed was that older users were less familiar with the icon, and did not always know what would happen if they were to click on it. But, what does this observation mean? Is this an actual phenomenon, or just an observation with nothing to back it up? We decided to dig deep into our research files and do some analysis to answer the big question: Do users understand the hamburger menu?

Two of us from the Catalyst research team independently pored over research session notes and labeled each participant who interacted with a hamburger menu on a mobile or tablet app or website. Participants were labeled according to whether they “understood” or “did not understand” based on behavior they exhibited regarding use of the hamburger menu and expectations of what it might do. When our labels did not match, we discussed the participant’s behavior and came to a consensus about how the participant should be labeled. Our analysis only included participants who interacted with a hamburger menu when it was in the scope or context of a research session’s tasks.

We also noted which research project each participant was a part of, as well as their age, gender, ethnicity, household income and recruitment criteria for the particular project (when available). We ended up analyzing a total of 93 individual participants.

Overall, 24 participants did not understand the hamburger menu and 69 understood it. Although most did understand it, the fact that over a third of intended users (34.8 percent) had trouble with it should be a warning sign to those who are considering housing the bulk of their navigation within a hamburger menu.

We decided to look into the hypothesis that we had all along: Do younger users understand the hamburger menu better than older users? Our research confirms that yes, they do. The graph below shows users from each age group separated out into those who understood and those who did not.

For younger users, there was a greater proportion of those who understood the hamburger menu. For the purpose of this research question, we defined “younger users” as those ages 18-44 and “older users” as those age 45+ (in our data, the oldest person was age 64). We found that 80.6% of younger users understood the hamburger menu as compared to 52.4% of older users. A statistical analysis backs up the validity of this finding. We can say with certainty that the difference between the two groups is statistically significant.*

When results prove statistically significant, it means they were caused by something other than chance. This isn’t to say that age causes a person to be more likely to understand or not understand the hamburger menu; it is possible that a factor that is correlated with age, such as tech savviness, is the real predictor of understanding.

After validating our original hypothesis, we wanted to see if there were any other indicators of a person’s likelihood of understanding the mobile hamburger menu navigation. We analyzed gender, but did not find any significant gender differences in our data. We also found no significant differences between field testing participants (recruited by Catalyst researchers off the street) and those who took part in lab-based research at the Catalyst facility.

So, what does this all mean? Hard data shows older users experience the hamburger menu differently, meaning that companies need to be cautious about using the hamburger menu in mobile navigation. If you expect that a significant portion of your users are going to be in their 40’s or older, consider an alternate navigation convention.

* For those who want the numbers, this is what we did: A two-sample z-test between proportions was performed to determine whether there was a significant difference between the two age segments with respect to the percentage that was found to understand the hamburger menu. The z-statistic was significant at the .05 critical alpha level, z = 2.5962, p=.00932. Ideally, we would have recruited participants according to the exact same standards and for the sole purpose of this study rather than compiling data ad hoc, but that was not feasible for this activity. Since the 93 participants came from 9 independent research studies, we cannot make perfect comparisons since different recruiting standards were used. Also, some of the mobile website and app designs may have been higher quality than others, making the navigation easier to understand.

]]>0Chelsey Delaneyhttp://www.catalystnyc.comhttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35122015-02-25T20:23:27Z2015-02-20T22:41:11ZWhen people talk about “sustainable design”, they’re usually talking about environmentally sustainable design. But sustainable UX design, in its most literal sense, can mean that the design process has orchestrated a system that allows the design to stay flexible, to grow and to endure. Sure, all great designers consider the flexibility and long-term states of […]

]]>When people talk about “sustainable design”, they’re usually talking about environmentally sustainable design. But sustainable UX design, in its most literal sense, can mean that the design process has orchestrated a system that allows the design to stay flexible, to grow and to endure.

Sure, all great designers consider the flexibility and long-term states of the end-product throughout the phases of the design process — when they conduct research, when they create the information architecture, when they plan how users will interact with the design on a variety of devices, and so forth. Ensuring sustainability, though, goes beyond the ordinary phases and activities of the design process, and even goes beyond the designers themselves.

To maximize UX sustainability, designers and clients should prioritize three key attributes: client education, organizational guidance, and what we at Catalyst call “ongoing support”.

Client Education

A few years or so ago, a stakeholder from a client team called my direct line after a big presentation. She had recently joined the project as her department’s representative to make sure the design addressed all her department’s business goals and priorities.

“This is really embarrassing,” she said immediately. “But, I only understood a little bit about what was presented and discussed today. ‘Information architecture’? I have no idea what that is. I feel stupid. I feel really stupid.”

This wasn’t the first time a client admitted to feeling dense about design and designer jargon. But, her confession really got to me: Her desire to understand extended past comprehending some basic design vocabulary words. She wanted to get the gist of design best practices so she could give valuable feedback, and thus effectively fulfill her role on the project team. (Also, a client should never, ever feel stupid.)

From that point on, I worked with that stakeholder and the rest of the client team to coach them on design principles and best practices as we traversed the process together. Not all clients need this sort of attention, of course, but for those who do, the extra time spent pays off for a few reasons:

Better and more informed design feedback yields better design

Faster decision-making takes place, along with a shorter approval process

The connection between client and designer strengthens as they learn to speak the same language

The more people on the client team who can advocate design best practices, the more likely it will be that best practices will be adhered to in the long run

Of course, you can’t educate everyone from the client side, let alone everyone who has the power to affect how the design is implemented — that’s where providing organizational guidance comes in.

Organizational Guidance

New clients who come to Catalyst with website redesign projects typically come with a current design that’s in pretty bad shape. More often than not, you are your website: Inconsistency issues surrounding content, labelling, structure and functionality make for a fragmented experience, and usually reflect a fragmented system for updating and maintaining a site.

No one should take the blame for piecemeal site maintenance — it’s almost always a result of a combination of things, including the content management system(s), no dedicated resource or team to update or maintain the site, and the push-and-pull of various priorities across an organization. Everyone wants their own website, or wants what they want on the homepage (and they want it all above the fold).

So, how does a design team help this situation?

We can assess the current state from a design perspective, and also offer an objective outsider view. From here, we can strategize together (with the client) to come up with a solution that can corral rogue microsites and unify all systems in place.

We can recommend the type of resources and/or team that’s needed to upkeep the redesign. Catalyst has even helped clients write job descriptions for new teams and roles.

We can help to define a good process for site maintenance, as well as who should hold responsibility for what.

We’ll work directly with the people who will be updating and maintaining the site to create customized resources and references that suits their team’s way of working. These references and tools will help them to maintain the site’s design and overall strategic goals, and to help grow the site in the future.

But, even with design-savvy clients and organizational improvements, things come up — times change, users evolve, resources move on, uncertainties arise. We encourage our clients to empower themselves to learn about design and its value, but we don’t expect them to become design experts. After all, that’s our job, and we’re here to provide that support whenever it’s needed.

Ongoing Support

On paper, “ongoing support” looks like a bucket of hours within a project plan that can be put towards any old thing. Because the task seems extraneous, it’s usually the first to get cut to thin out the project budget; however, ongoing support can be a very powerful thing because it can include any needed task or activity (which works out great for emergencies).

Some particularly valuable things ongoing support can be put towards include:

Conducting testing on the newly live design

Working with developers to make sure the design is implemented correctly

Providing extra documentation to act as a reference for how the design should work

And more…

The biggest value of “ongoing support”, though, is that the design team and the client team truly become one team — with no rigid project scope or specific task delegations, the relationship dynamic feels symbiotic, flexible and relaxed.

Justifying Sustainable UX

Spending more time and money in the short-term seems like a downside of creating sustainable UX. But, in the long-term, clients save money and are guaranteed to get their money’s worth: A great design team can plan and present the most amazing experience possible, but that doesn’t mean it will be implemented well or maintained properly. When the execution of the design suffers, the high-quality design work that’s been done goes to waste.

Investing in sustainable UX means investing in high-quality design that doesn’t go to waste and doesn’t have an expiration date — it also means investing in a lasting relationship that provides knowledge and value that extends beyond a project plan.

]]>0Nick Gouldhttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=35012015-02-04T16:24:35Z2015-02-04T16:24:35ZIf you aren’t listening to the StartUp podcast, you should be. It’s nominally the story of a startup podcast company as they go from founding to funding to audience research and product development. What makes StartUp special, however, is that the company founders, especially Alex Blumberg (a former This American Life producer), have allowed listeners […]

]]>If you aren’t listening to the StartUp podcast, you should be. It’s nominally the story of a startup podcast company as they go from founding to funding to audience research and product development. What makes StartUp special, however, is that the company founders, especially Alex Blumberg (a former This American Life producer), have allowed listeners unprecedented access into their deepest hopes and fears, frustrations and triumphs. Listening to StartUp is sometimes like being inside the heads (and living rooms) of the founders as they wrestle with imperfect knowledge and an evolving vision of what their company could be. My bet is that any business owner or manager will relate to these feelings and experiences – even if the specific events of this young company’s life aren’t that familiar.

The latest episode will bring particular joy to anyone in the technology or design fields who has considered ways to validate a product concept without investing too much time and money. Alex and his colleagues are struggling with deciding between sticking to their core expertise of content creation or branching out into app development. Specifically, they are thinking about making a proprietary podcast app that would offer subscribers extra content and functions for a fee (the shows themselves are free to download via other podcast apps).

Fortunately, the Google Ventures Design team is on hand to help them decide! The GV team members are fans of the show and saw this as a great opportunity to showcase their Design Sprint methodology…and play cameo roles on the podcast in the process. You know you’re onto something if Google offers to fly to your offices and provide free help with your product vision. Alex’s partner Matt Lieber likens the experience to having Derek Jeter offer to bat cleanup for your little league team. Of course, you accept.

The Google team’s proposition strikes Alex as totally revolutionary but it will be pretty familiar to many listeners: build a prototype! Then test it! With users! I suspect that a little of Alex’s amazement was designed to boost the “ah-ha!” value of the episode (in fairness, facilitated design workshops are not exactly the stuff of great audio entertainment, so it’s hard to blame him for laying it on a little thick).

What did bother me a little, though, was that the episode refers to the process of designing and testing a prototype as “faking” a product because what you build is nonfunctional and is only used to gather concept feedback. I’m being picky, but a prototype isn’t a fake product. It’s an early version of something that may very well evolve into the “real” product that customers actually buy and use. It’s also an opportunity to learn invaluable lessons about what may make the difference between product success and failure.

Anyway, what do Alex and the team learn from their fake product? I won’t ruin the surprise, but here are some tidbits:

The Google Ventures Design team is “big on sketching” and they play Dave Brubeck to stimulate creativity.

By contrast, brainstorming “feels productive” but it’s actually a waste of time because everyone has to wait their turn to talk.

At least one research participant – a desirable user, apparently – is so uncomfortable with silence that he needs to listen to something while he’s flossing his teeth.

Customers don’t want to pay money for extras. In the words of one participant: “If the turkey is free, dude…I don’t want to pay for the parsley.”

The end of the episode comes complete with the usual “small sample size” caveat (they only interviewed five people), but the good news is that the Google guys made a video about the whole process that shows the prototype. It’s cool to see what they came up with and the video is candid about the things that didn’t go over well with users. Sausage-making is fun!

You can listen to this episode out of sequence, but I highly recommend you start the podcast from the beginning. There are currently thirteen episodes that are each about a half hour long.

]]>0Catalyst Grouphttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=34932015-02-03T19:09:00Z2015-02-03T19:02:04ZRecently, we’ve been working with several clients on designing tools for their employees. This work always holds a special place in our heart, because we find that internal design projects are too-often neglected. Today’s workforce increasingly depends on digital interfaces to complete some, or all, of their job. But, companies often invest time and money […]

]]>Recently, we’ve been working with several clients on designing tools for their employees. This work always holds a special place in our heart, because we find that internal design projects are too-often neglected.

Today’s workforce increasingly depends on digital interfaces to complete some, or all, of their job. But, companies often invest time and money in the creation of intranets that employees don’t visit, or software that requires lots of tech support and never ends up working quite right. What begins as a noble quest to increase productivity and help employees turns into an organizational nightmare that’s ultimately a waste of money.

Many of these tools don’t succeed for one main reason: They don’t meet the needs of the users (the employees) who will actually be working with them. This neglect often stems from the sentiment that “employees have to use the tool even if it isn’t ideal, so why invest in improving it.” This mindset can be detrimental to organizations because it can foster an environment of frustration and actually slow down the work process.

In order to avoid waste and better serve your employees, we recommend a design process that starts with research activities focussed on identifying the needs of users and stakeholders. Insights that arise from these activities should guide the priorities and scope of the process. Here are three general tips for designing a successful internal site or application:

1. Know the business goals.

We start every project by asking, “What is the overall goal for this experience?” Asking this question means defining a metric for success. For many companies, success can be determined by how well the design serves to meet its business goal(s). Business goals should be stated and made clear from the beginning, and should be kept in mind throughout the design process.

2. Talk to the people who will actually use the tool, and talk to them early.

While managers and other stakeholders may be able to convey some of the needs of the people using the product, they often miss out on providing a complete picture because they don’t regularly use the software. Or, they don’t use it like a frequent user would.

A research method called Contextual Inquiry involves careful observation of natural behaviors, and can provide insight into how, why and where an employee uses a tool or application. Information about their environment, context and priorities can help to inform key design decisions.

For example, let’s say your employee is a salesperson who travels by car often, and uses an iPad to decide where to drive next. The design would serve this user best by mapping their sales route ahead of time and following along via GPS, requiring as little gestural input as possible (for safety). Or, maybe this salesperson relies on print materials more than digital materials — the design might provide a direct way to export sales data into a simple, easy-to-read ready-to-print PDF. Both examples account for different needs, with the underlying goal being meeting as many needs as possible.

3. Test throughout the design process.

User testing doesn’t have to be cumbersome. Gathering design feedback — formal or informal — from users throughout the project highlights which concepts and features that resonate and which concepts and features need improvement. As little as one day of informal testing between design iterations can provide a tremendous amount of value for the design direction as a whole.

Employees may not have an option in what software they use at work, but creating a simple, efficient work environment can boost productivity and overall morale. Kudos to our awesome clients and everyone else out there who’s making tools designed for their employees a priority.

]]>0Catalyst Grouphttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=34802015-01-30T17:43:54Z2015-01-30T17:43:54ZThe new year is upon us and I’m betting more than one of you has “read more”, “be more involved in industry events”, or even gasp “network” on your list of New Year’s resolutions. In one fell swoop you can check all three of these goals off your list by attending the upcoming UX Book […]

]]>The new year is upon us and I’m betting more than one of you has “read more”, “be more involved in industry events”, or even gasp “network” on your list of New Year’s resolutions. In one fell swoop you can check all three of these goals off your list by attending the upcoming UX Book Club Meetup.

]]>0Catalyst Grouphttp://www.catalystnyc.com/?p=34552014-12-23T22:32:46Z2014-12-23T22:32:46ZAs designers of digital products, it’s rare that we get to step away from the computer screen and put together a tangible product. Sure, we post-it, sketch, and whiteboard with the best of ‘em, but I can’t think of the last time that we came up with a 3-D finished product. That’s exactly why we’ve […]

]]>As designers of digital products, it’s rare that we get to step away from the computer screen and put together a tangible product. Sure, we post-it, sketch, and whiteboard with the best of ‘em, but I can’t think of the last time that we came up with a 3-D finished product.

That’s exactly why we’ve been counting the days until we could craft our beloved gingerbread houses. Last year Meredith Noble brought us into her family tradition and we’ve been itching to get back ever since.

Like any good design project, we started by understanding the plan.

And, building the structure.

Then, we took a break and got back to that work that we’re actually paid to do while the icing dried.

Finally, we were ready for the fun part! Without moodboards, a style guide, or rounds of concepting we were able to create what we consider to be beautiful masterpieces.

We loved an afternoon of feeling like kids again (while actually hanging out with Nick’s kids)